Acton talks budget, Measure L, public safety at Dems brunch

Ridgecrest City Councilwoman Lori Acton spoke Saturday at the Democratic Club of the High Desert's monthly brunch on matters of the city ranging from the ongoing budget to the Parks and Recreation Department.

Ridgecrest City Councilwoman Lori Acton spoke Saturday at the Democratic Club of the High Desert's monthly brunch on matters of the city ranging from the ongoing budget to the Parks and Recreation Department.

“We are in a unique situation (with the budget),” Acton said. “We balanced the budget but we had to cut $1.2 million to do so and that is not pretty any way you look at it.”

Acton said the difficulty lies in balancing the priorities of the citizens needs.

“We are struggling as a city trying to take care of our citizens in both their quality of life and their safety,” she said.

Acton said the passage of the Measure L general sales tax was a blessing, but followed up by saying if voters decided not to renew it in four years, the city would have to find alternative means of funding.

“We are trying to align ourselves to be positioned to not have that money,” she said. “If we do have it, it's great, but it's like using one-time money, and that's something this council doesn't want to do.”

She segued into wanting to make the parks and recreation department more self-sufficient by utilizing several athletic groups and nonprofits.

“Those who play sports group together and we can help them,” Acton said. “They can apply for grants and they can do things through private enterprise.”

She said that was one reason for ending its lease of LeRoy Jackson Sports Complex early with Kern County, a transition she said would save the city $60,000 a year in maintenance costs.

“Eventually, I hope all of our programs will go into a private or private-public partnership so that we can still have a quality of life,” Acton said. “The city cannot take that burden anymore, because if we don't find a way to generate more revenue, all the money that goes to parks and rec will funnel to the police department.”

Acton addressed the current funding for the Ridgecrest Police Department, pointing out that the council did not tentatively agree to cut two police officer positions.

Instead, RPD had two vacant positions of a 33-authorized authorized police force that the council decided not to fund.

“We still have 31 police officers,” she said. “You still have the same amount of officers, they are still responding to calls, and response time hasn't gone down.”

She said the goal was to find a way to move more Measure L funds into road maintenance and find alternative funding for RPD.

Acton said there was a balance as far as current crime rates went. Burglaries and other property crimes were up but other crimes continued to fall.

Page 2 of 2 - While the governor's prison realignment plan and the shifting of prisoners to local and county control continued to be a burden on local law enforcement agencies, Acton said RPD continued to be proactive in solving crimes.

“My concern is that I don't want to see violent crimes going up,” she said. With burglaries, citizens could be proactive by purchasing surveillance equipment for homes and businesses.

She said finding the balance to all areas of the budget continued to be key.

Acton said the current fiscal year's budget was a prime example of the balance, and there was one concept the city needed to solve.

“We don't have a spending problem, we have a revenue problem,” Acton said. “We have asked staff to cut, cut, cut and they have and the budget we gave them is underspent.”

However, revenue generation continues to be a problem.

“People still go to Lancaster to shop and pave that city's streets (with sales tax) because they don't shop here,” she said. “That's a problem because if you're not spending your money here and we don't have a tax base, we don't have the money to give the citizens what they want.”

Those things include the basics such as wastewater service, public safety and infrastructure and excluded the nice-to-haves like parks and recreation programs.

“The nice-to-haves aren't going to happen until we get the basics taken care of,” Acton said. “We can't do that if we don't stay in town and do something with the taxes here.”

However, she clarified she was not advocating raising taxes, but rather growing the tax base itself.

“Do we want new stores in here? Absolutely,” she said. “But we need to prove to those stores that money will be spent in town.”